North West England's Best Views

By Simon Jenkins

England's views are remarkable for their beauty and variety. In this illustrated, first-of-its-kind guide, bestselling author Simon Jenkins picks the very best views from North West England, including the Lake District and Hartside, High Cup Nick and Liverpool Pierhead - and explains the fascinating stories behind them. Jenkins' entertaining and erudite entries provide the rich historical, geographical, botanical and architectural background to North West England's breathtaking sights both iconic and undiscovered.

Filled with roman roads, cliff-tops, follies, mountains, ancient castles, rolling forests and heart-stopping moments, you'll soon wonder how you chose walks, mini-breaks or spontaneous diversions without it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Release date: Oct 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781782830641

Simon Jenkins

Sir Simon Jenkins is an award-winning journalist and author of several books on the politics, history and architecture of England. He writes for the Guardian and the Sunday Times, as well as broadcasting for the BBC. He is the co-author of The Battle for the Falklands with Max Hastings. Jenkins was knighted for services to journalism in 2004.

Book preview

BORROWDALE

From Castle Crag

The glacial sweep of the Derwent from the heights of Scafell into a secluded basin and out through the ‘Jaws of Borrowdale’ is the definitive Cumbrian landscape. When bathed in sun, Borrowdale can seem a secret paradise, a Voltairean El Dorado. But it is seldom a place for sunbathing. The dale has the heaviest rainfall in England and is better known for swirling mists, sheeting storms, icy drizzle and just the occasional, exhilarating, shaft of sunlight dashing here and there to illuminate its peaks. It is like a dark gallery in which masterpieces are lit by a random spotlight, one at a time.

Early travellers professed terror at Borrowdale’s wild beauty. The poet Thomas Gray, visiting in 1769, found Derwentwater ‘lap’d in Elysium’, but the Jaws of Borrowdale ‘a turbulent chaos . . . rolled in confusion’. He was scared even of the road. The eighteenth-century Newcastle composer Charles Avison recalled the dale as ‘Beauty lying in the lap of Horrour’. These were followed by the Welsh traveller Thomas Pennant, who contrasted Skiddaw, rising ‘over the country like a generous lord’, while the fells of Borrowdale ‘frown on it like a hardened tyrant’.

Towering over the exit from the dale towards Derwentwater stands Castle Crag, a block of igneous rock hurled from the Scafell eruption 400 million years ago. It and its fellow crag King’s How stand over ‘the Jaws’ like two sentries set to keep outsiders at bay. Somehow they survived the scouring of later glaciers and became the focus of almost every painting of this part of the Lakes. Castle Crag stretches my half-hour accessibility rule, but is not a hard climb. The path to King’s How is shorter and has the famous Bowder Stone at its foot, but the view is less impressive.

Wainright’s ‘finest square mile’: Borrowdale towards Scafell

The view from the crag looking north towards Derwentwater shows the river prettily snaking its way down to the village of Grange. To the